Look for the "Top Ranked Law Firms" special report to appear in Fortune’s December 26, 2011 issue.

A while back, I was on a plane ride from Florida and was seated next to — you guessed it — a lawyer. How surprised he was that I head up the Martindale–Hubbell®Lawyer Ratings group. We exchanged pleasantries and he started talking about his practice. He indicated that in today’s fiercely competitive marketplace, law firms of all sizes are struggling to find ways to stand out and differentiate their firm from a crowd of competitors in the midst of the economic downturn.
I mentioned to him that one effective way to help your firm stand out is to make it easy for prospective clients to see how lawyers at your firm are rated by their peers – by fellow legal professionals with first-hand knowledge of the rated lawyer’s ethical standards and legal ability. We facilitate this process through our stewardship of the Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™.

Look for the “Top Ranked Law Firms” special report to appear in Fortune’s December 26, 2011 issue. Read on for the details.

Achieving a Peer Review Rating is a mark of distinction in the legal field and a powerful signal to buyers and referrers of legal services that the rated lawyer is worthy of their consideration. Simply achieving the rating is important but more important still is the need to promote one’s rating where it will be seen by those looking to hire you.

We’ve been working with lawyers for decades to help them promote their Peer Review Ratings in a number of creative ways. Today we’re announcing a new relationship with Fortune Magazine to help bring greater national exposure to U.S. law firms that employ a high percentage of lawyers with an AV® Preeminent™ Peer Review Rating — the highest Peer Review Rating available.

LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell has teamed with Fortune and ALM Media Properties to help them compile and publish a “Top Ranked Law Firms” special report to appear in Fortune’s December 26, 2011 “Investor’s Guide” issue. The list of firms recognized in the report will also be featured on CNNMoney.com, law.com and martindale.com

To create this list, we tapped our comprehensive database to identify U.S. firms with 21 or more attorneys in which at least 1 in 3 lawyers in the firm achieved the AV Preeminent Peer Review rating.

Sophisticated buyers of legal services take such ratings into account because:

Peer Review Ratings are an objective indicator that a lawyer has been deemed by his or her peers as having the highest ethical standards and professional legal ability.

The methodology is sound, time-honored, well understood and well-respected.

Peer Review Ratings serve as a key validation tool for buyers looking to verify credentials and to gather a more complete picture of lawyers they’re thinking about hiring.

And, unlike some competing rating systems, Peer Review Ratings are not based on some mysterious, hidden algorithm. They are based purely on the confidential assessments offered by a lawyer’s peers.

We’re excited to help generate greater exposure for these outstanding lawyers and law firms in front of Fortune’s 4.4 million readers. In addition to our new relationship with Fortune, we have over 30 “regional” magazines that we partner with to publish similar lists focused on distinct geographic areas.

I recently returned from a trip to San Francisco where I attended the ABA 2010 Annual Meeting. At that meeting I had a number of conversations with lawyers, sharing with them some of the new stuff that is happening at MH and listening to their thoughts on best practices in networking and making connections that help drive business development efforts of law firms. Increasingly, lawyers are making and nurturing these connections online through professional networking sites like our own legal-specific community, martindale.com® Connected, and via wider professional networks such as LinkedIn. In fact I reminded some of the lawyers that MH recognized early on the value of giving lawyers a simple, effective way to leverage connections on multiple online networks and through a collaboration with LinkedIn, we made it possible for lawyers to identify and leverage their LinkedIn connections while browsing both Martindale.com and martindale.com Connected.

So where am I going with this story? Today we launched our next step: a Lawyer Ratings applicationintegrated in LinkedIn that enables lawyers to showcase their Martindale-Hubbell Ratings to an audience of millions of LinkedIn members. Lawyers who have a Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating or Client Review Rating and who are subscribers of Martindale-Hubbell services can use the application to display their ratings in their LinkedIn profile.

The Lawyer Ratings application for LinkedIn delivers a powerful new way to extend the reach of these valuable Martindale-Hubbell ratings to other channels where potential clients, referral and personal networks connect.

The application will also allow their clients another convenient channel to complete a Martindale Hubbell® Client Review.

I am very excited about this LinkedIn integrated application we have built for lawyers and their potential clients – and welcome your feedback on how we can continue to improve it and move it forward to meet the ever-changing needs of the legal market. When you get a chance, take a look and let us know what you think!

It was just a little more than one year ago that Martindale-Hubbell launched Client Review Ratings, a new service designed to enable buyers and providers of legal services to offer and benefit from anonymous client feedback on a lawyer or firm. There is no cost to either lawyers or clients to participate.

This week we passed the 10,000 mark in Client Review Ratings collected and available for use. Client Review ratings are fast becoming an industry requirement being fueled by market demand. Users want multiple perspectives and more comprehensive data on lawyer capabilities. As a reputable and credible source with a history of establishing the only lawyer to lawyer peer ratings program over 130 years ago, Martindale Hubbell is in a unique place to facilitate this new client service on behalf of lawyers and law firms and their clients.

My thanks to all of those who’ve taken the time to submit their reviews and to the team at Martindale-Hubbell who continue to coordinate the process. Martindale-Hubbell works to ensure that those submitting client review ratings have indeed been a client of the law firm or lawyer in question and that the matter or matters on which the rating is based are no longer before the courts. While no one ratings system can claim to offer the “final word” on which lawyer or law firm is best in a given jurisdiction or area of practice, they can arm potential buyers with better and more comprehensive information about lawyers under consideration.

We believe our Client Review Ratings complements our 100 year Martindale Hubbell Peer Review Ratings program and together they are an important piece of the puzzle leading to better decision making, improved outcomes for clients and better-qualified leads for lawyers and firms.

Last November, we presented the newly transformed Martindale-Hubbell Ratings at the ABA Law Firm Marketing Strategies Conference. All the major U.S. ratings and ranking services, including Avvo, Best Lawyers, Chambers, Lawdragon, Martindale-Hubbell and Super Lawyers, were invited to present their ratings methodologies and share how the resulting ratings and reviews provide value to users. (Chambers declined to participate.)

Following the presentations, program attendees, a broadly qualified audience of lawyers that included a dozen in-house counsel from large corporations such as GlaxoSmithKline, Toys “R” Us, Comcast and Boeing, completed a questionnaire about law firm ratings and rankings. Among the key findings, the ABA reports, “Martindale-Hubbell was given the most credibility among lawyer respondents.”

We’re excited and proud to have such significant recognition from an audience whose opinions are among the most valued by our business. As I mentioned in previous posts, last year’s ratings transformation was designed based on extensive research and feedback from the legal community, whose thoughts and input inform our business decisions every step of the way.

Now the community has spoken, and what they say validates what we have long claimed: Martindale-Hubbell Ratings are a credible and reliable tool to evaluate and select lawyers and law firms. In fact, in a head-to-head comparison by our most informed audience, Martindale-Hubbell comes out on top.

Read more about the ABA Ranking the Raters; Rating the Rankers program:

I wanted to address and hopefully clarify some confusion and misinformation floating around the blogosphere this week regarding fees/options for the display of the Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating in 2010.

Starting in January of 2010, the Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating will not be displayed on the profiles of lawyers at business to business law firms that are not members of martindale.com. These lawyers are free to promote their rating in their own marketing materials and on their own Web sites regardless of whether or not they subscribe to Martindale-Hubbell – however, a subscription will be needed to display the rating on the martindale.com web site.

The Peer Review Rating is a service that Martindale-Hubbell provides to the Bar. We know that law firms and lawyers, both private practice and in-house counsel, value this service very highly. Lawyers are objectively rated by peers and receive a rating whether or not they or their firm maintains a paid listing on martindale.com.

Separately, this past summer, we piloted an “Individual Lawyer Package” program. This special program enabled lawyers who see value in Martindale-Hubbell at non-subscribing business to business law firms to benefit from the visibility and the resources available at martindale.com. The Individual Lawyer Package included a full listing and ratings display on the profile for an introductory price of $1,200 (discounted to $599 for the trial). We are evaluating the results of this offer to determine if, and at what price point, to offer a similar package in 2010. Some have confused this $599 pilot program offering as a “replacement” for our standard $59 ratings display fee – this is not the case.

LexisNexis has a strong commitment to the mission of the Martindale Hubbell Peer Review Ratings. Please note that nothing has changed for those law firms already benefiting from a subscription to martindale.com or lawyers.com.

I hope that this post clears things up a bit – and feel free to contact me with any questions…

I’ve never been a big fan of the expression “eating our own dog food.” Tech companies in particular (see Google and Oracle) tend to overuse it to show that they believe in their products so much that they are willing to use it for themselves. Recently though, I had the chance to try some of Martindale-Hubbell’s own dog food.

Over the past few months, my wife and I had been casually shopping for a new apartment. As a first time home buyer, it was a scary prospect committing large sums of money in bad economy, but rates and prices were low so we figured we get acquainted with the market. We found an apartment we liked and threw in a low offer to see what would happen. After a few counteroffers, the sellers accepted our offer!

After the initial excitement, reality quickly set it. We got by without a broker, but I needed a lawyer and fast. I got recommendations from all sorts of places – friends, the sellers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, online discussion forums, etc. Many people try to find the cheapest lawyer to do the transaction, but my parents had lost out on tens of thousands of dollars on an apartment sale in the past because their lawyer didn’t uncover some important risks. I was willing to pay up for the right person.

So where did I turn to vet all of these referrals? Being a good corporate citizen, I of course turned to my sister site, lawyers.com. If I couldn’t even find the lawyer on there, they were eliminated from consideration. I then looked closely at the practice areas that the lawyer added to their profiles. If residential real estate was not central to what they did, they were also eliminated. I did not want someone who dabbled in a number of different matters and just did real estate on the side. Of the remaining lawyers, 2 of them were AV Peer Review Rated. I contact both of these lawyers and after speaking with some references for each, I ended up hiring Donna Glasgow.

Although I interact with lawyers more often than most people looking to hire a real estate lawyer, that still didn’t make me feel any more comfortable with the process. While I was aware that lawyers.com had guides to help you understand your legal issues, I had never actually visited one of these guides myself. They had one specifically called Buy and Sell a House. I expected to find info primarily about the legal aspects of the home buying process, but instead I found dozens of useful articles covering the basics of real estate and an overview of the entire process, from deciding whether buying is right for you, to dealing with real estate agents, obtaining mortgage financing, to closing, and of course, to hiring a lawyer. Bottom line is that I would have benefited greatly from checking this out well before even thinking about hiring a lawyer.

It may ultimately take years for me to know whether I made the right choice in hiring Donna, but so far so good, in no small part thanks to lawyers.com.

The legendary UCLA coach John Wooden said “past success does not equate future success. We can only learn from the past, apply it to the present and plan for the future.” Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ have long been the gold standard in the industry and with good reason – the ratings methodology is objective and fair, the selection process is random and in order to receive a rating, a lawyer is not required to be with a large law firm or a small law firm. The legal community respects the accuracy of Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ because it knows that its peers – the people best suited to assess legal ability – are directly involved in the process.

The needs of people, both lawyers and consumers, who evaluate legal services, have evolved, and the demand for more comprehensive and detailed lawyer ratings has emerged. Formal and informal conversations as well as research from the legal community and consumers came back to us consistently asking that we provide greater depth and specificity to our ratings. Earlier this year we launched Martindale-Hubbell Client Review Ratingsa complement to our Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings. This week I am happy to share that Martindale-Hubbell will take its second step towards transforming its lawyer ratings with the rollout of transformed Peer Review Ratings, affirming our goal of delivering a complete ‘360 degree’ view of more than one million lawyers.

It is important to me that you understand that Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ will continue to reflect the anonymous opinions of members of the Bar and the Judiciary and attest to a lawyer’s legal ability and professional ethics.

The General Ethical Standards Rating still denotes adherence to professional standards of conduct and ethics, reliability, diligence and other criteria relevant to the discharge of professional responsibilities.

Legal Ability Ratings will now be based on performance in five key areas, rated on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest). These key areas are Legal Knowledge, Analytical Capabilities, Judgment, Communication Ability and Legal Experience.

You still need a combination of the Very High General Ethical Standards Rating and a Legal Ability Rating, but the Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating will now include an average numeric rating, a rating term and may include a certification mark:

Another aspect of change for Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ is the retirement of the CV® certification mark. Over the years we have engaged in a lot of dialogue with the legal community about this and we listened. We learned that this change would simplify the overall ratings system. Lawyers who currently are CV rated will no longer be listed as CV but instead as “Rated 2.9” until they are re-reviewed using the changed methodology.

Martindale-Hubbell has also relaxed the tenure restriction on achievement of the higher ratings, so younger lawyers are now eligible to achieve an AV or BV Peer Review Rating.

In the coming weeks, lawyers will be contacted notifying them of how these changes will affect their ratings. So far, the feedback is positive, and we want to continue our discussions with you to keep learning and improving this valuable program. Over the next 10 years, we plan to complete a re-review of every rated lawyer using the changed methodology but lawyers may request an expedited re-review so that they can take advantage of the benefits of the changed methodology—including area of practice specificity and peer feedback.

These steps show that we are not relying on our past success, but instead we are learning from the past and gaining new knowledge from you now, as we transform our service for the future. Ratings continue to be an integral part of Martindale-Hubbell and most importantly, we know that Ratings are integral to your decision-making. As we transform our ratings, rest assured that we will apply what we have learned and not forget what’s important to you.

Many of you are familiar with Chambers & Partners, a highly respected, independent, London-based research and publishing company that provides rankings of lawyers and law firms throughout the world. LexisNexis and Chambers & Partners reached an agreement last November to make Chambers’ lawyer rankings and commentary accessible via martindale.com.

Starting today, a Chambers & Partners icon will appear next to those profiles of lawyers and law firms on martindale.com that have been recognized with a ranking from Chambers. Clicking on this icon will open a window linked to the Chambers website showing rankings and editorial commentary.

The addition of Chambers rankings is part of a broader LexisNexis effort to transform martindale.com through the introduction of new tools and new sources of third-party insights and intelligence. The addition of the influential and widely recognized rankings by Chambers complements a series of other site enhancements to martindale.com introduced over the past year. These changes include an agreement with LinkedIn to give users an easy way to find and leverage connections through the broad LinkedIn online network, the addition of video content on lawyers and law firms, blogs, and the launch of Martindale-Hubbell Connected — a global, online networking community built specifically for legal professionals. Later this year, the company will introduce an enhanced version of its Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings and begin displaying on the site formal client feedback on lawyers and law firms collected through our recently launched Client Review feature.

This combination of resources will give users a complete 360-degree view of more than a million lawyers worldwide and will help legal buyers to find, evaluate and select counsel.

Consumers have a long history of consulting various ratings sources to obtain an objective evaluation of a product before making a purchase. The Internet has facilitated access to these evaluation tools and helped popularize their use in guiding purchase decisions for everything from consumer products to professional services.

The emergence of these new tools is facilitating a significant change in the way that buyers of legal services evaluate lawyers.

The April issue of Metropolitan Corporate Counsel magazine contains an article on this subject written by Alfredo Sciascia, vice president of strategic planning for the LexisNexis Client Development organization, that explores some of the various ratings services in the marketplace and discusses their use in arming potential buyers with better and more comprehensive information about lawyers under consideration.

Like many of you, I tuned into the recent 2008 Beijing Olympics and was awed by some of the spectacular displays of human endurance and team effort. I will long remember the athletes’ pride, the world-class effort put forth by China, and the careful planning that went into this spectacular and successful event. Indeed, we were proud to have a Martindale-Hubbell family connection – Quentin Butts, a client development specialist in our office, is the uncle of 400m bronze winner David Neville.

With any spectacular launch, a vital factor is planning — taking small steps that lead to the big prize. For Martindale-Hubbell, that big prize is to become the online resource of choice for information about lawyers. For a while I have been saying that MH missed the tech curve. Blogging, social networking and other technologies have become important to our customers and we need to offer as many options as we can to our customers. That means more content, more interactive tools and RSS feeds. MH is undergoing an unprecedented business transformation to ensure that we remain strategic and most relevant to our clients and our clients’ clients. In response to their needs, we have enhanced both martindale.com and lawyers.com over the last several months. We’ve made it easier to evaluate and select legal counsel, including side-by-side comparisons, My Watch List and Legal Document Services. We are also beta-testing Martindale-Hubbell Connected, our online legal professional network.

Today I am happy to announce another small step toward becoming the online resource of choice. Buyers of legal services, from corporate counsel to private individuals, have told us that Client Reviews will be a critical part in selecting counsel. Today we launch our very first global “Review this Lawyer as a Client” link.

Clicking this link will prompt clients to complete a Client Review survey. After receiving a minimum of three reviews submitted by their clients, firms and lawyers will have a chance to review the ratings achieved before they are published on martindale.com and lawyers.com. Learn more about Client Review.

Ultimately, Client Reviews will provide a lawyer with the opportunity to promote his or her strengths. Along with our Peer Review Ratings, users will be able to select the lawyers and firms that are best qualified to handle their business.

David Neville and the other medal winners seek the most advance training strategies they can get to help them win. Hitting the target however requires more than just talent and hard work, it requires planning. This “Review this Lawyer as a Client” link contributes to our MH strategy and assists clients seeking out the best legal advice for their needs. And just like the athletes, we’re still striving to be faster, better and stronger.